In another study, Bem examined whether the well-known priming effect could also be reversed. In a typical priming study, people are shown a photo and they have to quickly indicate if the photo represents a negative or positive image. If the photo is of a cuddly kitten, you press the "positive" button and if the photo is of maggots on rotting meat, you press the "negative" button. A wealth of research has examined how subliminal priming can speed up your ability to categorize these photos. Subliminal priming occurs when a word is flashed on the computer screen so quickly that your conscious brain doesn't recognize what you saw, but your nonconscious brain does. So you just see a flash, and if I asked you to tell me what you saw, you wouldn't be able to. But deep down, your nonconscious brain saw the word and processed it. In priming studies, we consistently find that people who are primed with a word consistent with the valence of the photo will categorize it quicker. So if I quickly flash the word "happy" before the kitten picture, you will click the "positive" button even quicker, but if I instead flash the word "ugly" before it, you will take longer to respond. This is because priming you with the word "happy" gets your mind ready to see happy things.

In Bem's retroactive priming study, he simply reversed the time sequence on this effect by flashing the primed word after the person categorized the photo. So I show you the kitten picture, you pick whether it is positive or negative, and then I randomly choose to prime you with a good or bad word. The results showed that people were quicker at categorizing photos when it was followed by a consistent prime. So not only will you categorize the kitten quicker when it is preceded by a good word, you will also categorize it quicker when it is followed by a good word. It was as if, while participants were categorizing the photo, their brain knew what word was coming next and this facilitated their decision.

One problem I think with the conclusion there is assuming the brain is the chief mechanism at work. I imagine this research is coming from the angle of typical materialist assumptions (for example the mind is more or less just the brain). Still, the result is intriguing -- a future event accelerates processing of a present action.

In Huayan Buddhism especially they liked to stress the relative quality of time. To them dependent origination actually goes in both directions. It basically isn't linear (at least from the perspective of a Buddha which is what the Avatamsaka-sutra/Flower Ornament Sutra tries to present). A cause is only relative to an effect ergo though that effect exists in the future it still has some kind of causal efficacy. That's why arousing the mind of Bodhicitta (the mind of enlightenment) creates that future effect of Buddhahood. Arousing Bodhicitta is attaining Buddhahood in a sense -- the cause (the initial arousal of the mind) is only possible because there is a relational effect (Buddhahood).

This actually lead to a lot of interesting theories about how YOUR FUTURE BUDDHA that you will eventually become affects you now. It also leads to conclusion that you don't take refuge in some other Buddha, but you take refuge in your future Buddha self, which is ultimately indistinguishable from all other Buddhas.

Such thought seems to have been popular in the Tang Dynasty as well as in Korea with the Huayan monk Uisang.

catmoon wrote:Don't you think it would be far more rational to conclude that the study has demonstrated that a human being takes longer to process conflicting stimuli than harmonious ones?

The input, whether it comes before or after, still accelerates the processing speed of the individual.

Sure, but look you can either interpret the results as I suggested above, which is in accord with everyday experience, or you can postulate a miraculous breaking of half the rules of reality as we know it.

Rationality prefers the simplest solution that accomodates the facts.

There are two inputs, a picture and a flashed word. If they are in accord, we process them faster, if they are in discord, we have to think a little snd we are slower to respond. Totally unremarkable.

catmoon wrote:There are two inputs, a picture and a flashed word. If they are in accord, we process them faster, if they are in discord, we have to think a little snd we are slower to respond. Totally unremarkable.

However the response is reported as faster even if the priming comes AFTER the response.

That is what is remarkable.

The priming is likewise effective if it comes before. But it also is effective if it comes after the response of categorization.

To my opinion.... psychic phenomena such things are present everywhere and always. We simply refuse to acknowledge them as they conflict with self impression. Singularity is simply not present at any time.Anything that conflicts with singular identity is strictly disallowed.Such speaks to the totality of things.

This is a plastic or fluid environment. You push down on water in a lake somewhere and it arises somewhere else...always. Predicting where it will rise and how...not to difficult if you just know how to look. The question is in the how.Scientifically...like finding new planets(just this year)of habitable nature,(accepting the notion such can be) it will take years upon years for the scientific community to accept such things as fact. We will all be long gone by that time.

So anyone who wants to find such things of evidence.....simply allowing oneself to not consider oneself as singular would be the way to go to my opinion.Some have such present in mindstreams they say from past spiritual lives in past times. I'd guess that is true but nothing prohibits that from being created with time right here and now.

I wouldn't wait on the evidence.But when such did happen....say you see the future to some extent, as say a product of certain types of meditations.....what of it? Mostly you couldn't use it, so of what great importance?It seems of very little importance. It's not like from seeing such you could change such.Doesn't work that way seemingly. You are seeing relationship in things. Knowing such wouldn't remove such relationship.

Reading minds....imagine we actively have to work to not read minds. Imagine most animals of the hunted type have the perceptive ability to ascertain a active mind in predator. Imagine predators could likewise have such notions to enhance their hunting ability. Imagine then that self arises to such a degree in a consciously thinking animal that it starts to conflict with singular sense of self.So then ability becomes quickly lost. In such context would the Buddha assumeing the clothes of a hunter(the orange and red) and exchanging the royal clothes have more meaning?

Off point perhaps. If initial poster deems so I will delete content.

"This order considers that progress can be achieved more rapidly during a single month of self-transformation through terrifying conditions in rough terrain and in "the abode of harmful forces" than through meditating for a period of three years in towns and monasteries"....Takpo Tashi Namgyal.

Heruka wrote:mind as both predictive and reactive would also be restrained to a upper limit by its entropy.

bingo! heres the admission in the article itself.

these are questions of "effect size." It is true that the effect sizes in Bem's studies are small (e.g., only slightly larger than chance). However, there are several reasons why we shouldn't just disregard these results based on small, but highly consistent, effect sizes.

Here's something similar ... but do take it with a pinch of salt.http://www.quantumconsciousness.org/spooky.htm"Instead of following a single trajectory like the electrons on a silicon chip, the energy in photosynthesis explores all of its options and collapses the quantum process only after the fact, retroactively “deciding” upon the most efficient pathway."

catmoon wrote:There are two inputs, a picture and a flashed word. If they are in accord, we process them faster, if they are in discord, we have to think a little snd we are slower to respond. Totally unremarkable.

However the response is reported as faster even if the priming comes AFTER the response.

That is what is remarkable.

The priming is likewise effective if it comes before. But it also is effective if it comes after the response of categorization.

You seem to misunderstand the article.

Woops I re-read it. I missed the fact that the "priming" occured after the response, thought they were saying it occured after the first stimulus.... then the response. Oh well. maybe I give it another read.